Report -Ushaw Collage Durham 2011

Oldskool

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Im not at all religious, in fact im an atheist,but walking round this place made me think twice about things.This has to be number one on my explore list,i know Host has just posted but ive got to much of a write up and to many pics just to tag on his report so sorry if your board with the place ...anyhoes...on with the report

Ushaw College

Ushaw College (St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw) is a Roman Catholic seminary, . It was founded at Douai as the English College, Douai in France in 1568, which moved to Ushaw Moor, four miles west of Durham in England in 1808 and became a Licensed Hall of the University of Durham in 1968. It is independent of the University but offers courses validated by the University. Both Church and lay students study at the college. In 2002 the College rejected a report from the Roman Catholic hierarchy that it should merge with St Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham. In October 2010 it was announced that the college is to close in the summer of 2011 due to the shortage of vocations in the Roman Catholic Church, and that the site is likely to be sold...
Some of the college's buildings are no longer used, but some have been converted into a conference centre. The main college buildings are grade II listed, however the College Chapel is grade II* and the Chapel of St Michael is grade I. The Refectory was designed and built by Pugin, as was the original chapel although this was later dismantled and replaced by the present building designed by Dunn and Hansom. The original college buildings (1804â€“1808) were designed by James Taylor.

(College of St. Cuthbert)
A combined college and seminary for the six dioceses that were comprised in the old Northern Vicariate of England. The government is vested in a united board of the bishops of these dioceses, with a president, a vice-president, and staff of about 30 professors. The average number of students is over 300, divided into three courses: the preparatory course, including about 80 boys, thehumanity course with about 130, and the philosophical and theological with about 100.

History
The suppression of the "Grands Anglais" at Douai the seminary which for 200 years had meant the Catholic Faith to England, was only one of the many far-reaching results that the French Revolution brought in its train. The immediate necessity under which the English Catholics found themselves of providing for the continuation of its work led to a project of establishing one college for the whole of England on English soil. Many difficulties supervened and finally the question arranged itself by the division of the refugee students from Douai into two bodies, one of which found shelter at Old Hall near Ware, while the remainder (mainly composed of students who were destined for the Northern Vicariate), after temporary sojourns at Tudhoe and Pontop, two villages in the vicinity of Durham, settled on 15 Oct., 1794, at Crook Hall, about eleven miles N.W. of that city. There they re-established Douai for the north of England, and it lived its life under the guidance of one of its former professors, Thomas Eyre, of John Lingard, the future historian, and of John Daniel, the actual president of Douai at its suppression, who seems to have been formally installed as president for a few days. Ten years' growth made Crook Hall inadequate for its purpose, and in 1804 Bishop William Gibson began the buildings at Ushaw to which four years later, the colony finallymigrated, the first detachment on 19 July, the rest on 2 August, 1808. There they found three sides of a massive quadrangle, with a frontage of about 170 feet and a depth of 220, ready for their habitation. The fourth side of this quadrangle was not added till 1819, under the president who succeeded Eyre in 1811, Dr. John Gillow; but no further material addition was made to the buildings until the fourth president, Charles Newsham, succeeded in 1837. He realized that, if Ushaw was adequately to continue its career, no pains nor expense must be spared to enlarge its capacity and to bring its arrangements into line with more modern requirements. The pioneers of the Gothic revival were at hand to assist him in this, and from the plans of the two Pugins and the two Hansoms the second church with its attendant chapels, the library, infirmary, museum, exhibition hall, lavatories, kitchens, and farm buildings, and a separate establishment for the younger boys, all sprang up around the old Georgian quadrangle.

In much more than a convention sense Monsignor Newsham may be called the founder of modern Ushaw; and the best evidence of how far-seeing were his plans and achievements lies in the fact that for twenty years after his death, in 1863, practically no addition was made to the fabric. In 1883 Monsignor Wrennal found it necessary to build a third church. Under Bishop Wilkinson, whoassumed the presidency in 1890, which he held conjointly with the Bishopric of Hexham and Newcastle till his death in 1909, a fresh period of activity began. A covered swimming bath, a gymnasium, two new dormitories, and over forty new living rooms, the enlargement of the exhibition hall, the elaborate decoration of the church with the erection of a new high altar, are all the products of his nineteen years of presidency. Two presidents have held office since his death: Monsignor Joseph Corbishly, who survived him only a year, and Monsignor William Henry Brown, under whom new lecture rooms have been erected to accommodate the largely increased numbers of philosophy and divinity students. Altogether the present blocks of buildings, with their enclosed courts, cover a rectangle 880 feet long by 420 feet broad; the outbuildings, grounds, and campus cover over 100 acres, and the whole estate, with its home and outlying farms, includes between 1200 and 1300 acres.

Many objects of historical and artistic interest are preserved in the college. Lingard bequeathed to it all his books and papers, which included an early manuscript and the proof sheets of his "History of England" with about 1500 of his letters; Wiseman is represented by the manuscripts of "Fabiola" and the "Hidden Gem", and of many sermons, lectures, and letters, while Eyre gathered for it a valuable collection of documents dealing with the English Catholic history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and intended for a continuation of Dodd's "Church History". Thelibrary, in which these are stored, contains about 45,000 volumes, mainly of theological and historical interest. It is especially rich in early printed liturgical books and in seventeenth-century controversy. Examples of Wynken de Worde's "York Manual", Higden's "Polychronicon", the "Nuremburg Chronicle", the "Ulm Cosmographs", the "Complutensian Polyglot", are found on its shelves, and, perhaps more interesting than all, about forty works that belonged to the pre-Reformation library of Durham Abbey and which still retain the original monastic bindings.